Climate's $20 Trillion, the Grid's $25 Trillion — The Infrastructure Supercycle

The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that integrating renewables and upgrading aging grids will require more than USD 600 billion a year in global grid infrastructure investment through 2030. It sees cumulative investment over the next 25 years exceeding USD 25 trillion. (Source: OilPrice)

According to a UN report, AI's energy use is estimated to double by 2030 to consume 3% of the world's electricity. Its cooling water use is projected to exceed the world population's annual drinking-water demand. (Source: Zmescience)

Google has signed a distributed energy resources (virtual power plant, VPP) deal with Voltus on PJM, the largest US grid. Voltus will aggregate up to 100 MW of distributed energy resources a year, with operation scheduled for 2027. (Source: MIT Technology Review)

An analysis of 4.5 million federal civil lawsuits from 2005 to 2026 found that the share of parties filing suit without a lawyer rose from 11% in 2022 to 16.8% in 2025. The number of complaints more than doubled compared with the period before AI adoption. (Source: MIT Technology Review)

An analysis by the Pangram AI-text detection tool found that the share of court filings containing AI-generated text rose from 1% in 2023 to 18% in 2026. (Source: MIT Technology Review)

South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) has announced a plan to invest KRW 22.5 billion through 2029 to develop AI models tailored to six strategic sectors, including bio, chemicals and energy. (Source: Yonhap News)

The South Korean government has finalized its 'K-Drone Dominance' strategy to create KRW 2 trillion (USD 1.3 billion) in public-sector drone demand over the next five years. Most of the roughly 600 drone manufacturers today are small firms with annual revenue under KRW 170 million. (Source: Yonhap News)

According to the UN's January 2026 'Global Water Bankruptcy' report, drought-related damages worldwide exceed USD 307 billion a year. Three in four people are projected to be affected by drought by 2050. (Source: Euronews)

Bloomberg Intelligence analysis projects that extreme weather will drive more than USD 20 trillion in global spending over the next decade. That drives a reallocation of capital from disaster recovery toward investment in infrastructure resilience. (Source: OilPrice)

According to a study published in Nature Food, greenhouse gas emissions from the world's rice paddies have roughly doubled over the past 60 years. As of the 2010s, they emitted 1,090 teragrams of CO2-equivalent a year. (Source: Onegreenplanet)

According to a report by the nonprofit Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), the global squid-fishing fleet is committing widespread environmental crimes and human rights abuses in three regulatory-gap regions: the Northwest Indian Ocean, the Southeast Pacific and the Southwest Atlantic. These three regions account for more than 60% of the world's squid supply. (Source: Inside Climate News)

In April 2026, the US national home-listing cancellation rate hit 5.8%, tying the highest level since March 2020 and rising 3.8% from the prior month. Cancellation rates were highest in Atlanta at 10%, San Jose at 9%, LA at 7.8%, Dallas at 7.8% and Seattle at 7.7%. (Source: CNBC)

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) estimates that Kazakhstan will face a shortfall of up to 50% against its household and business water demand by 2040. (Source: OilPrice)

The Trump administration has canceled or indefinitely blocked 165 onshore wind farms and at least four major offshore projects. The combined generating capacity of the canceled projects exceeds 4 gigawatts. (Source: OilPrice)

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has decided to dismantle its USD 386 million Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) network within the next 15 months. A decade's worth of ocean and climate data collection is set to halt. (Source: Mongabay)

Global carbon-removal credit volume under contract rose to about 64 million tons in 2025, more than doubling year-over-year. The average price of direct air capture (DAC) credits exceeds USD 500 a ton. (Source: Nikkei Asia)

There are only five large uranium-conversion facilities in the world, and Russia controls half of their processing capacity. Russia and China are locking up uranium resources across Central Asia and Africa. (Source: OilPrice)

India and the US signed a framework agreement on cooperation over critical-mineral and rare-earth supply chains on May 26, 2026, during US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's visit to India. The four Quad countries — Australia, India, Japan and the US — also agreed in India to launch a USD 20 billion critical-minerals framework. (Source: South China Morning Post)

Mandatory environmental disclosure regimes are in force or planned across more than 40 jurisdictions, from California to Qatar. Through CDP's resource-sharing program, more than 45,000 companies received requests to disclose supply-chain data in 2025. (Source: Trellis)

Australia's government is pushing a News Bargaining Incentive (NBI) bill that would impose a levy of 2.25% of Australian revenue (cut to 1.5% if a deal is struck) on social media and search platforms that fail to sign agreements to pay for Australian news content. Meta criticized it as a violation of Australia's free trade agreement with the US. (Source: Al Jazeera)

JNIM (Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin) has been blockading roads west of Mali's capital Bamako since September 2025, paralyzing trade with Senegal. At the Port of Dakar in November 2025, 120 containers a day bound for Mali were blocked, and by February 2026 some 4,000 empty containers were stranded in Bamako. In 2024, Mali was Senegal's largest export destination, accounting for 26.5% of Senegal's exports, or roughly USD 1.42 billion. (Source: Premiumtimesng)

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) ruled that Google may not penalize publishers that opt out of its AI features by lowering their rankings in ordinary search results. It ordered Google to comply with all requirements within nine months. (Source: Ars Technica)

The number of women CEOs in the Fortune 500 reached 55 for the first time, hitting 11% of the total, and has held above 11% for four straight years. (Source: Fortune)

In the US, Ozempic's main patent — the semaglutide compound patent — is set to expire in December 2031. More than 15 million American adults are estimated to be taking GLP-1 drugs. (Source: BBC World)

About 4 million lead water pipes remain in use across the US, with Illinois the highest at roughly 1.5 million. Federal rules require water utilities nationwide to replace all lead pipes by 2037. (Source: Inside Climate News)